Entries in Paula Deen
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Michael N. Todaro/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Paula Deen made a name for herself, and made herself a small fortune, by dishing up indulgent treats like a doughnut-topped bacon burger and deep-fried anything on her Food Network TV show, in her magazine and even aboard cruise ships with her fans.

When in January she announced she had type 2 diabetes, she was hit hard by critics who denounced her for hiding her diagnosis from the public for three years and only coming forward after signing a deal with diabetes drug-maker Novo Nordisk.

Now the Southern chef is firing back, on the scale, announcing to People magazine that she has lost 30 pounds in six months, and she’s not stopping.

“It took me a couple of years to get to this point,” Deen tells the magazine in this week’s cover story out Friday. “If you make a few small changes, they can add up to big results.”

So how did the 65-year-old chef lose the equivalent of 120 sticks of her beloved, and well-used, butter? For one thing, instead of hitting the deep fryer, she started hitting the weights.

“For the first time since she was a high school cheerleader, Paula has started working out,” People magazine’s Lesley Messer told ABC News. “She says it’s really helping her feel better.”

Deen herself visited the ABC food show The Chew to show off her new figure and reveal her diet secrets. “It’s really about moderation,” she said on the show. “I’ve said it for so long but I really started to practice that.

“I double my salad, double my green beans and the carbs are like this,” she said, pointing to a small portion size. “I wasn’t about to change my life but I have made simple changes in my life.”

After she went public with her diabetes in January, Deen launched a new campaign, “Diabetes in a New Light,” a partnership with Novo Nordisk. Deen reportedly takes the company’s drug Victoza to help her maintain proper blood-sugar levels.

Deen, who says she has gone from a size 18 to a size 10, told People the key to her weight-loss success has been dropping white foods like potatoes from her diet, and swapping out others, like using mustard instead of ketchup.

Now, instead of skipping breakfast altogether, Deen says she’ll enjoy a fruit smoothie. For dinner, instead of fried chicken or worse, baked chicken or fish and Greek salad instead of chips are on the table at the Deen household.

The woman famous for making Chocolate Gooey Butter Cookies now enjoys sugar-free ice cream for dessert instead. “I do think differently now” about food,” Deen said. “I’m more aware.”

While it remains to be seen what kind of inspiration Deen is providing to her fans who loyally tuned in to see what kind of over-the-top indulgences she had cooked up, her weight loss is forcing her own family to keep up.

Her husband, Michael Groover, is reportedly drinking four shakes per day to lose 100 pounds and her oldest son, Jamie, 44, has dropped 40 pounds himself.

ABC/Donna Svennevik(NEW YORK) -- Celebrity chef Paula Deen has revamped her diet and lost 30 pounds, she told the co-hosts of The View Monday.

Monday’s episode, which took a look at increasing American obesity rates, was titled “The Fat Show.” Co-host Joy Behar quipped to Deen “and you’re the guest of honor.”

Deen has come under fire in recent weeks for waiting to announce her diabetes diagnosis and signing a pharmaceutical promo deal with Novo Nordisk.

The co-hosts gave Deen the opportunity to defend herself against critics of the buttery recipes she has become known for.

“Studies have shown, Barbara, that there’s not one food that causes diabetes. What causes Type II diabetes is being overweight…I’ve just come to grips, over the past four or five months, with my diabetes.”

“This is not something I chose,” she said. “I’m the only one in my family, and my family we all eat the same way.”

However, Deen does acknowledge that she received warnings from her doctors in the past.

“I ignored it for the first couple of years — I thought the doctor was wrong.”

Deen has lost 30 pounds, eating in moderation and allowing herself one cheat day a week with her family.

Serg Alexander/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Bacon burgers sandwiched between two donuts and fried cheesecake was what Paula Deen was known for — until news of her type 2 diabetes diagnosis was made public.

Since then, the 67-year-old Food Network host has received backlash from critics, including chef Anthony Bourdain, for not being upfront about her 3-year-old diagnosis until she made a paid endorsement commercial with pharmaceutical company, Novo Nordisk.

Bourdain, host of the Travel Channel’s No Reservations, went public with his criticism in January tweeting, “Thinking of getting into the leg-breaking business, so I can profitably sell crutches later.”

“When your signature dish is a hamburger in between a doughnut, and you’ve been cheerfully selling this stuff knowing all along that you’ve got type 2 diabetes. … It’s in bad taste if nothing else,” he told Eater.

Responding to Bourdain’s remarks in the May edition of Prevention Magazine, Deen said: “I thought, oh my gosh, what hospital did he just get out of?…People out there with diabetes haven’t chosen this. It’s not their fault. I thought that was very, very cruel.”

Bourdain first expressed his disdain for Deen a year before her diabetes announcement, telling TV Guide that her artery-clogging ways made her the “worst, most dangerous person in America.”

But Deen says she’s made changes to her diet by cutting out carbs and eating in moderation. In her ad for Novo Nordisk she says, “I have made simple changes like cutting back on one of my favorite things… sweet tea.”

Deen said she’s walking for 30 minutes every day and cutting her food portions in half. She doesn’t know how much she weighs — “We don’t own a scale in our house,” she told the magazine — but said she’d find out at her next checkup.

“Every six months I go for a physical and find out,” she said.

Deen has known about her type 2 diabetes for three years, but only made it public in January.

“I made the choice at the time to keep it close to me, to keep it close to my chest,” she told USA Today at the time. “I felt like I had nothing to offer anybody other than the announcement. I wasn’t armed with enough knowledge. I knew when it was time, it would be in God’s time.”

After she went public with her diabetes, Deen launched a new campaign, “Diabetes in a New Light,” a partnership with diabetes drugmaker Novo Nordisk. Deen reportedly takes the company’s drug Victoza to help her maintain proper blood sugar levels.

About 26 million Americans have diabetes, a number expected to skyrocket as the boomer population gets older. Type 2 diabetes is most common in people who are genetically predisposed to the condition, and who are obese and physically inactive, according to Carla Wolper, senior clinical nutritionist at the New York Obesity Research Center at St. Luke’s Hospital in Manhattan.

“Should Paula Deen lose a lot of weight and influence others to do so, and should she show those who watch her show how to do it? She could become a goddess,” said Wolper.

Deen, 64, confirmed Tuesday on NBC's Today show that she was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes three years ago and she is now launching a new campaign, "Diabetes in a New Light." The campaign is in partnership with diabetes drug maker Novo Nordisk.

"I made the choice at the time to keep it close to me, to keep it close to my chest," she told USA Today. "I felt like I had nothing to offer anybody other than the announcement. I wasn't armed with enough knowledge. I knew when it was time, it would be in God's time."

Deen reportedly treats her diabetes with the company's drug Victoza, a daily injectable drug that is meant to maintain blood sugar levels. She will appear in an advertisement for the drug later this month, USA Today reported.

Anthony Bourdain, a New York-based chef and host of the Travel Channel's No Reservations, has long been critical of Deen's cuisine, having told TV Guide that the chef is the "worst, most dangerous person in America" because of her high-fat cooking. In the wake of her diabetes announcement, Bourdain had even more criticism to sling. "When your signature dish is hamburger in between a doughnut, and you've been cheerfully selling this stuff knowing all along that you've got Type 2 Diabetes... It's in bad taste if nothing else," he told Eater.

Others welcomed the announcement.

"She need not stop cooking, but she should probably eat that way only rarely," said Keith Ayoob, associate professor of pediatrics at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. "Her recipes often fall into the category of once-a-month cooking...The woman has a deep-fat fryer in her kitchen. That's a red flag if there ever was one."

About 26 million Americans live with diabetes. It is a chronic disease in which blood-sugar levels are abnormally high in the body, and most people are overweight or obese at the time of diagnosis. In 2007, diabetes was listed as the underlying cause of more than 71,000 deaths, according to the American Diabetes Association. At the rate that Americans are getting diagnosed and becoming increasingly obese, experts say the number of new diabetes cases is expected to double by 2050.

"This announcement simply supports the evidence that shows Type 2 diabetes increases in risk with age and weight," said Connie Diekman, director of university nutrition at Washington University at St. Louis. "Many baby boomers are reaching the point where facts about disease risk will become realities in their lives."

"I know the heavy Southern cuisine is her trademark, but I'd love to see her keep the tradition while lightening up the preparation," said Diekman. "Showing others how to maintain the flavor while changing the preparation or ingredients would be a big help for many. She can certainly maintain her traditional cooking, but not only say 'eat in moderation,' she could say 'eat less often.'"

Type 2 diabetes most commonly results when someone with a genetic predisposition to the condition is obese and physically inactive, said Carla Wolper, senior clinical nutritionist at the New York Obesity Research Center at St. Luke's Hospital in Manhattan.

Deen acknowledged that she hopes to spread awareness and help others fight the illness. She has already made small dietary changes and has worked more exercise into her day.

Michael N. Todaro/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- He’s known for biting into a frog’s beating heart and chomping on water crickets, but for Bizarre Foods host Andrew Zimmern, what’s really disgusting is the buttered, battered blasphemy peddled by Paula Deen, Sandra Lee and their peers.

“With people like Paula, with people like Sandra Lee, and other people who represent those types of foods and eating and lifestyle, I think it’s not bad that they’re saying, ‘Hey you should try this,’ it’s that they’re not saying ‘Don’t eat it all the time,’” Zimmern told ABC News on Sunday at the New York Food & Wine Festival’s Carts in the Parc event to benefit the Food Bank of New York City. In short: If Paula Deen’s going to teach you how to make fried butter balls, she should also teach you to indulge in them maybe a couple times in your life.

“It’s the same problem I have with the fast food industry," Zimmern said. “There’s nothing wrong with getting a hamburger sometimes. There’s nothing wrong with getting chicken fingers. What’s wrong is commoditizing food to the point where it’s poisonous, cheapening it to the point that anyone can afford it and selling it as something that you should eat all the time. I think that’s very dangerous.”

“Those of us that have a very large platform have a responsibility to tell other people what they’re thinking and feeling,” he continued. “People want to know where I travel, they want to know what I believe in, they want to know how I live my life. This is how I live my life,” he said, holding up a palm-sized Italian pork slider, “Right size portions, despite my un-right sized appetites of all types.”

Zimmern’s appetite took him and his Travel Channel show through the U.S. for the seventh season of Bizarre Foods, which premieres in January.

But his biggest takeaway from filming: Americans need to slow down.

“For peace of mind and for comfort, it’s important to get back to that time when we were up with the sun, down with the sun,” he said. “Eating with the seasons. Spending more time with community and family. I think we’ve lost that.”

Meanwhile, one of the fellow celebrity cooks Zimmern called out is moving in the other direction.

“Our jobs are to service the over-extended homemaker, this is what the show Semi-Homemade is all about,” Food Network host Sandra Lee said in a statement to ABC News. "It offers solutions -- it does not micro-manage the viewers ‘common sense’ (we assume they have it when it comes to their diets).” Deen did not respond to ABC News' request for comment.